38

"We will now begin the presentation for the 12th Loyore University gallery exhibition. A round of applause, please." Andre, who was the anchor announced, when the program commenced few minutes later, with most of the students from the department of Arts in attendance.

Tahti went through her presentation documents one more time, as the audience clapped, not wanting to make a fool of herself in front of the professors.

"There are nine presenters today..." Andre started, when the applause died down. "We will now select the assistants for each pieces after the presentation is over. The assistants will help the presenters through the entire process of starting of the piece to preparing for the exhibition. It differs by each piece, but we recommend having around one to three assistants. There is a limit to the number of volunteers, so even if there are many for your piece, it's advisable not to use them all. The first student on the list is Sol Rodriguez." Andre announced and walked down from the stage, just as Sol walked towards it.

Jennie wasn't in the hall yet, Tahti noticed after glancing round as Sol was about to start. Was she planning on missing out her bestie's presentation?

The audience applauded her as she took a slight now on the stage, while glowing in her usual wear of shirt on denim trousers.

"Hello, I'm Sol Rodriguez, from the department of Sculpture. The main theme of my piece is Union and the main material I used is the railway sleepers."

The entrance of the hall quietly opened and Jennie tiptoed in, trying not to attract attention or distract Sol, who smiled on noticing her entry.

"The rigidity and trace of the endurance in an abandoned sleeper seemed attractive, so I focused on the emphasis of the basic distribution of the materials such as oil stains, made over time."

Sol raised her head from her presentation documents to glance at Jennie, who winked at her and Tahti noticed she was smiling.

"In conclusion, the purpose of this project is to make abandoned sleepers material look attractive after use. Thank you."

The audience applauded again, even louder than they'd done the first time and Tahti wondered how hers was going to go.

"You're the best, Sol." Jennie screamed, amidst the claps and Sol smiled as she walked down the stage.

"Next, is Tahti Lee, from the department of Sculpture."

"You can do it, Tahti." Someone cheered from the audience as there was a rapturous applause when she started to walk down towards the stage.

Few professors smiled at her as she mounted the stage and she bowed slightly in greeting first. "Hello everyone, I'm Tahti Lee, from the department of Sculpture...The theme of my piece is..."

Her voice trailed off on noticing someone's entrance from the back of the hall and she gulped on sighting Demir walk down the stairs, and towards one of the seats.

Everyone's staring at you, Tahti. You can't screw this up, she reminded herself and dropped her head to look down at her document.

"The theme of my piece is 'yeoji'. I know most of us here are knew to this word. That's because the word 'yeoji' is a Chinese word and its' characters 'yeo' and 'ji' means left over and land respectively. This depicts an empty area of land, which means the possibility of hope or slight chance of something happening..."

Presentations weren't over until an hour later, and Tahti's heart started racing as Andre called out the presenters to the stage, before he started calling out volunteers who'd like to assist the various presenters.

She wiggled her head nervously, dropping her had as students kept lining up in sevens and eights behind different presenters and she desperately hoped that someone would volunteer for hers, as well. She couldn't imagine doing an art work, where she couldn't use metal, all by herself.

"Who would like to assist Tahti Lee?" The question she dreaded for the moment, came at last and she refused to meet with disappointing looks on the faces of her colleagues.

"What?"

Hums and murmurs suddenly rose in the hall and Tahti was forced to raise her head to see who or what had been the cause of the hums and tried to hide her surprised expression when she saw Demir raising his hand.

"Tahti Lee, do you accept Demir Wilson as your assistant?"

Of course, she wanted to scream madly within her but she turned to look at Demir, who looked like he was expecting her to turn him down. "Yes." She calmly replied.

"Alright. If that's everyone..."

"Me too." Someone screamed from the audience and everyone's head whipped round to see it was Henry, one of their juniors. "I'll volunteer as well."

Andre turned to her. "Tahti Lee, do you accept Henry Anthony as your assistant?"

"Yes."

"Come on up, then."

Thank God, she sighed in relief as her newly appointed assistants left their seats to make their way towards the stage. Although she didn't know much about the piece she was about to embark on, she was confident that she will do well.

"Alright then. You should share your work schedules and related materials with your assistants before we finish up. The report format is uploaded on our school website, so make sure to check them out."

"Okay." The students on the stage chorused and Andre turned to them with a smile.

"Good work today, everyone." He said and the audience applauded them as they brought the presentation to a close.

The students left the stage, with the various assistants working towards their group leaders for a brief meeting. Tahti felt there was no need for that in her group as she already knew the two of them already. One was an immediate junior and the other one was a junior in his second year.

She was just leaving the hall after fetching her stuffs when someone called her. On spinning to see who it was, she discovered it was Demir and she dragged in a courage filling breath wet as he neared.

"What's up?"

"You tried your hair up." He replied and she raised her hand to touch her nape as she looked away. She'd decided to tie her hair up, for a reason unknown to her, before she'd gone up to the stage for her presentation. But she didn't want to believe, it was really because he'd asked her to.

"It was a little hot inside." She lied blithely, before considering her dumb her lie was as there had been about five AC's in the hall.

"But, are you really going to do this?"

"What do you mean?"

"You really didn't have to volunteer to help..." She was saying, although she was grateful he did. At least, he had saved her some face.

"I thought it will be fun. I liked the idea and it seems interesting to work with metal..."

So, that was the reason he was joining her team.

"To be honest I haven't work with metal before so I'm not that skilled."

"I'll help you. That's what assistants are for." He replied and she tore her eyes from him, unable to keep looking at him. As expected, Demir Wilson had the solution to every problem that came his way.

"You don't want to work with me?" He suddenly asked, on noticing her countenance had changed and she returned her eyes to him.

"It's not like that." She said. It was only because she felt embarrassed that she wasn't able to believe he'd developed interested, just because he sincerely liked her piece.

"Tahti." Someone called and she was grateful for the diversion as she veered to see Henry walking towards them, holding three cans of soda.

"I'm looking forward to working with you." He said and handed her a can.

"Thanks." She replied, with a smile as he turned to hand the other to Demir.

"I'm in such an awesome team."

"Me too." Demir replied and stretched out his hand towards her for a handshake.

"Me too" Tahti reluctantly replied, as she took his hand. She had decided not to touch him again ever since they had ended things, though her body kept saying otherwise but here she was, doing what she had decided not to do.

She raised her eyes to look at Demir, who wasn't letting her hand go yet. Henry kept looking at them at intervals, wondering what was with the tension.

She raised a hand to sweep down his hand, freeing her other hand.

"Thanks for volunteering to help me." She said and dipped a hand into her bag, to take out the copies of the documents, with which she had made her presentation with. "Here are the materials." She said and handed the copies to them.

"Do you both have time this evening?" Demir asked.

"Are we going to have drinks to celebrate becoming a team?" Henry asked.

"I know a metalworking studio. Do you want to check it out?" Demir asked, not sharing his eyes off her and Henry returned to her, almost at the same time as if he was seeking her approval. "Okay."

"Yes." Henry replied, and a text came into his phone, almost he raised a fist to punch the air. He slipped out his phone from his pocket to look down at it, before he raised his head, a regretful look, on his face.

"Tahti, can I meet up with you, later tonight?Something came up."

"Sure." She shrugged and he smiled.

"I'll see you at eight then." He replied and turned to bade Demir goodbye, before he ran off.

"By the way, you dance pretty well." He said and she turned to him. Their dance test had taken place, earlier that week and she'd feared she was going to screw it up at first, but she has done great. The lessons she'd got from him, ended up not going to a waste.

"Did you see?"

"Yeah, I saw it when I was passing by." He said. "I knew you would be a good dancer." "Thanks, I didn't step on my partner's foot, this time."

"Thanks?" Is that it?"

"Fine." She replied, with a smile. "I'll treat you to a meal."

"Alright." He replied and raised a hand to work on his left shoulder.

"Did you stay up all night? You're overworking yourself." She told him, a worried look on her face.

"I've gotten a grip on myself, thanks to you. You told me to be sincere, which means I can't act cool about slight things, any longer." He replied as she looked away in response, a little upset that he had misquoted the sincerity, she'd been talking about.

"By the way, I tried applying lacquer on glass once..." He was saying as he took out his phone from his pocket, to show her what he'd did working on, the previous night. "It just keeps falling off. I think there should be another way to do this."

"You should make the surface rough." She said, after she'd leaned closer to take a look. He pulled back to look at her, in surprise. "How do you know?"

"My aunt does pottery. I learnt some from her."

A smile crossed his lips as he returned back, to stand close to her.

"I want to learn too. I tried baking glass with glaze on it and the colour came out different every time. It was cool."

"I'll teach you. I'm better than you, anyway." She said as she reached out to take his phone, to zoom in on the picture of the baked glass.